Checklists
Every process below is broken into ordered steps with the exact documents each office asks for. Progress is saved in your browser, and every checklist prints cleanly.
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Alien Registration Card (ARC) checklist for Korea
Every step to get your Korean residence card: the 90-day deadline, booking the HiKorea appointment, the exact documents, the fee, and what to do while you wait for the card.
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Opening a Korean bank account as a foreigner — checklist
Step-by-step guide to opening a bank account in Korea as a foreign resident: which banks are easiest, why your first account is transfer-limited, and how to lift the limit.
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National Health Insurance in Korea — enrolment checklist
How National Health Insurance works for foreign residents in Korea: who is enrolled automatically, how premiums are calculated, what is covered, and what to do about the bill.
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Exchanging a foreign driver's licence in Korea — checklist
How to convert a foreign driving licence to a Korean one: which countries can exchange, embassy verification, the written test, documents and fees.
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Getting a Korean phone number as a foreigner — checklist
Prepaid versus postpaid Korean mobile plans for foreign residents, the identity-verification problem that blocks half the internet, MVNO options, and how to keep costs down.
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Leaving Korea checklist — final settlement and refunds
What to do before you leave Korea for good: early tax settlement, national pension lump-sum refund, deposit recovery, closing accounts, and the order that matters.
How to use these
The order matters more than it looks. Your alien registration card gates most of what follows — banks, phone contracts and the national health scheme all want the number, and until it exists you are working around its absence rather than through it. Start there, then take whichever of the others you actually need.
Each step names the documents that particular counter asks for, because the list is rarely the same twice. An immigration office, a bank branch and a district office can want three different combinations of the same passport, contract and certificate. Where a requirement is set nationally the checklist says so; where it comes down to branch practice, it says that instead — and that difference decides whether pushing back is worth your time.
Why a checklist rather than an article
Korean administrative processes fail on documents, not on understanding. Almost nobody is turned away from an immigration counter because they misunderstood the law; they are turned away because a certificate was issued more than three months ago, or arrived without an apostille, or names a middle name that the passport omits. An article explains a system. A checklist survives contact with the counter, which is a different job.
So these are written to be carried, not read. Each one prints to a single page with a tick box against every item, progress is saved in your browser between visits, and the steps are ordered by dependency rather than by importance — the thing you have to do first comes first, even when it is the least interesting part. Where a step commonly fails, the checklist says what the failure looks like and what to bring instead, because discovering that at the window costs you the trip.
Before you set out
Four habits remove most of the wasted journeys, and they apply to every process below.
- Check the issue date on every certificate. Korean offices routinely require documents issued within the last three months, and a document that was fine in March is refused in July. This catches more people than any other single rule.
- Bring the original and a copy of everything. Copies are frequently kept and originals frequently inspected. Carrying both turns a second visit into a two-minute wait.
- Make your name identical everywhere. Passport, contract, bank record and registration card should agree character for character, including middle names and hyphens. Mismatches surface later, usually at the least convenient moment, and unpicking them takes longer than getting it right once.
- Book ahead where booking exists. Immigration offices run on reservations, and walk-in capacity at the busy ones is close to theoretical. A slot booked three weeks out beats a morning spent queuing for a number that runs out.
None of this is specific to foreigners — Koreans deal with the same document culture. What is specific to foreigners is that the consequences attach to your status of stay, so a missed deadline is not merely an inconvenience. Where a step has a legal time limit, the checklist marks it.